Problems with Asus X800 Pro TVD BIOS Flash

[reddragon105]

So after reading various articles on the internet, including the ones on this site, about the fact that X800 Pro VIVO cards are essentially XT cards but with 4 pipelines disabled and clock speeds set lower, I saved up and bought an Asus X800 Pro TVD (VIVO) card, in the hope that it would be a simple case of flashing it with an XT BIOS to get a £400 card out of £300.

Alas it was not to be... I have successfully flashed the card with the Asus X800 XT BIOS from this website, everything seems perfectly fine, yet my PC freezes up totally when I'm playing a game. First I hear a slight click from my PC (although I can't identify which component it comes from), then the picture freezes but the sound continues, a couple of seconds later the sound stops too, although the picture always stays on screen it is completely frozen and does not resume. My PC requires a hard restart.

This happens with all of the various games I've played it with, UT2004, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Warhammer Dawn of War, although sometimes I can play for 20-30 mins without it happening, sometimes it cuts out before the game has even finished loading. (i have never actually got Half-Life 2 to load as far as the gameplay). At first I thought it was a temperature issue, but with using ATITool to monitor temperature, it was tending to stay at 65-75 C when playing games, and would crash at any temperature (it has played games stably at 75, crashed another time at 75, also crashed as low as 50-something). So maybe its not temperature, although can anyone tell me what temperature these cards should ideally be running at?

I flashed it back to the original BIOS, using the backup I made, and it has been running fine ever since. No problems at all (Half-Life 2 looks fantastic! although it even did on my old GF4 Ti4800).
I tried overclocking it to XT speeds, but keeping it as a Pro with 12 pipelines, and it was also fine.
Then I tried flashing it with a retail-ATI Pro BIOS with 16 pipelines, it was also fine.
But when I tried it with that BIOS and overclocked to XT speeds, it had the same problem.

So what is the issue here? Is it a bad card? Defective pipelines? Bad flash? Bad BIOS? Overheating? Power issue? Or 'other'?

Any help/advice would be appreciated. I'll take any suggestions, and can provide any other info or test results that will help diagnosis.

 

[Mad-Matt]

My Asus Card acts in the very same way. Theres a reason the cards were labeled as pro and not xt pe and thats because the core couldnt take it (at least under default cooler).

Im currently using the Asus Pro bios with 16 pipes enabled and can clock the memory to the PE value of 560 without issues. The core on the other hand only seemes to work upto 513, the next setting up at 520 (PE) causes screen corruption and freezing. ATITray Artifact tester also sees errors at 520. I currently OC the core to 500 like a normal XT would be. Im running 500/560 without issues.
i was able to bench Doom3 (Demo1) at PE setting at got 71fps and 1024x, high quality, 2x AA. At 500/560 I get 68fps so theres only 3 fps difference which I can live with .

 

[Urlyin]

So after reading various articles on the internet, including the ones on this site, about the fact that X800 Pro VIVO cards are essentially XT cards but with 4 pipelines disabled and clock speeds set lower, I saved up and bought an Asus X800 Pro TVD (VIVO) card, in the hope that it would be a simple case of flashing it with an XT BIOS to get a £400 card out of £300.

Alas it was not to be... I have successfully flashed the card with the Asus X800 XT BIOS from this website, everything seems perfectly fine, yet my PC freezes up totally when I'm playing a game. First I hear a slight click from my PC (although I can't identify which component it comes from), then the picture freezes but the sound continues, a couple of seconds later the sound stops too, although the picture always stays on screen it is completely frozen and does not resume. My PC requires a hard restart.

This happens with all of the various games I've played it with, UT2004, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Warhammer Dawn of War, although sometimes I can play for 20-30 mins without it happening, sometimes it cuts out before the game has even finished loading. (i have never actually got Half-Life 2 to load as far as the gameplay). At first I thought it was a temperature issue, but with using ATITool to monitor temperature, it was tending to stay at 65-75 C when playing games, and would crash at any temperature (it has played games stably at 75, crashed another time at 75, also crashed as low as 50-something). So maybe its not temperature, although can anyone tell me what temperature these cards should ideally be running at?

I flashed it back to the original BIOS, using the backup I made, and it has been running fine ever since. No problems at all (Half-Life 2 looks fantastic! although it even did on my old GF4 Ti4800).
I tried overclocking it to XT speeds, but keeping it as a Pro with 12 pipelines, and it was also fine.
Then I tried flashing it with a retail-ATI Pro BIOS with 16 pipelines, it was also fine.
But when I tried it with that BIOS and overclocked to XT speeds, it had the same problem.

So what is the issue here? Is it a bad card? Defective pipelines? Bad flash? Bad BIOS? Overheating? Power issue? Or 'other'?

Any help/advice would be appreciated. I'll take any suggestions, and can provide any other info or test results that will help diagnosis.

There is nothing wrong with either card guys. The threads have gotten long and split up but a number of people have had the same issue. Generally speaking just about all VIVO will run at XT 500/500 speeds and some will run at XT PE speeds 520/560. It also depends on the BIOS that you use, some cards like the ATI BIOS and some Connect3d BIOS or even one of the others. While some require a volt mod to stablize it at XT PE speeds.

I know now W1zzard has been refining the ATITool but don't rely on it solely...

 

[reddragon105]

well after trying various BIOSs today, and testing at different speeds, i've found that i can't get my card to function properly with an XT BIOS at all, even if its XT clocked at 500/500.
using a Pro BIOS, it works when its overclocked to XTPE speeds (520/560)
it also works with a Pro BIOS with 16 pipelines enabled and overclocked to XTPE speeds

it just always crashes if it has an XT BIOS, no matter what speed it is set at.


so it is just a case of some Pro VIVO cards being able to cope with the XTPE speeds and some not? is it just the luck of the draw?
if so, roughly what proportion of Pro VIVO cards can run at XTPE? are we talking about most of them, or very few? also, does it depend on manufacturer? for eg. do you stand a better chance of getting a card capable of XTPE speeds if its made by ATI that if it was made by Sapphire?

i guess what im asking is, it it worth me buying another X800 Pro VIVO to see if i can get one that can manage XTPE speeds?

 

[reddragon105]

correction - it does not work with a Pro BIOS @ 16pipelines
however it does work with 12 pipelines at XTPE speeds

so i think a defective pipeline is the problem here

 

[Mad-Matt]

Id have thaught defective pipes would have done the chequer board efect durring games if they were fauly. It could be that the core just cant work at pe speeds (on stock cooling and/or voltage). After all im sure asus would have sold it as pe if it was faultless at that rating.

Just for kicks here is my Asus Pro Vivo 16 Pipe bios to try. Its clocked at pro speeds as normal but hopefully you can clock more. im using 500/560 without issue. At 520/560 the system does freeze and fills screen with massive corruption after a short time.

 

[Urlyin]

With the XT being added, quality waffers for the Pro VIVO are dewindling... alot of people including myself have had to do volt mod to obtain PE speeds. I assume most if not all Pro VIVO have been able to handle the XT speeds of 500/500. It has also been noticed that not all VIVO have liked the Pro 16p BIOS. I doubt seriously that it's a bad pipe and more likely finding a BIOS and speed that you card likes ... There are three to four XT 500/500 BIOS a Sapphire, VisionTek and a Connect3d that I'm aware of in W1zzards BIOS bin ... have you tried all of them?

 

[mR Yellow]

Hey guys

Ive got a ASUS x800pro (non vivo). I flashed the card with x800xt bios (after connecting the lasercuts). I used the ASUS x800xt PE bios - i just lowered the clock speeds using "Rabit ATI bios editor".

The device ID b4 flash is 4A49 (using ATI Tool)
The device after flash still reads as 4A49 (using ATI Tool)

But if i use rabit to check out the bios it reads 4A50?
[I used ATI Tool to make a bios dump of newly flashed bios.]

BTW i wasn't able to unlock xtra pipes. ATI tool still reads it as 12.
So maybe their is some other hardware lock. That doesn't allow u to change device ID even when the bios ID reads as 4A50!

Any insight will be appreciated

 

[reddragon105]

ok something really strange happened to me yesterday, let me share...

first of all, after having my card back as a X800 Pro for a few days with no problems, i got the clicking/freezing problem again, even with it as a Pro. it was happening all the time and eventually it started to happen as windows loaded, rendering my PC useless.

so there i was thinking i'd just ruined a £300 graphics card... i went to put my old graphics card back in. when i did so - that wouldnt work either. i got specks all over the screen, a dreadful refresh rate and the PC froze after about 5 mins. i soon found out why - the fan on it has broken. with nothing left to do, i put the Asus X800 Pro back in, and amazingly it worked again!

then i decided to see what would happen if i gave it an XT BIOS again, so i flashed it with ASus X800 XTPE. its now working fine with 16 pipelines and 520/560 speeds. hasnt crashed once in about an hour of half life 2, when it did it before the game was even loaded before. surely thats a good sign, but i dont understand why....

i would like to ask - what is a good temperature for an X800 XTPE to be running at? i've got ATiTool monitoring it and it seems to peak at 75C. which doesnt seem too bad, but its a pretty cold day.
am i right in thinking that XTs have different coolers to Pros? would it be worth investing in a better cooler? any recommendations?

 

[Urlyin]

ok something really strange happened to me yesterday, let me share...

first of all, after having my card back as a X800 Pro for a few days with no problems, i got the clicking/freezing problem again, even with it as a Pro. it was happening all the time and eventually it started to happen as windows loaded, rendering my PC useless.

so there i was thinking i'd just ruined a £300 graphics card... i went to put my old graphics card back in. when i did so - that wouldnt work either. i got specks all over the screen, a dreadful refresh rate and the PC froze after about 5 mins. i soon found out why - the fan on it has broken. with nothing left to do, i put the Asus X800 Pro back in, and amazingly it worked again!

then i decided to see what would happen if i gave it an XT BIOS again, so i flashed it with ASus X800 XTPE. its now working fine with 16 pipelines and 520/560 speeds. hasnt crashed once in about an hour of half life 2, when it did it before the game was even loaded before. surely thats a good sign, but i dont understand why....

i would like to ask - what is a good temperature for an X800 XTPE to be running at? i've got ATiTool monitoring it and it seems to peak at 75C. which doesnt seem too bad, but its a pretty cold day.
am i right in thinking that XTs have different coolers to Pros? would it be worth investing in a better cooler? any recommendations?

Red read the begining of this article it talks abouts temps and the links for W1zzards HSF reviews... glad to here your card has settled down. The temps you see now are normal ...

 

[webcrawler]

Hi, All
Im new at this Video Card moding stuff, I have an AX800 Non pro (vivo) ATITool says I have the R430 chip. I want to know if Im able to flash this card to unlock the 16 pipes, and how do I do it.
These are the device specs on ATITool:
PCI Express
Active pipelines: 12
Config_die_fuses : 0xffff7fff
config_substrate_fuses: 0xffffff9e
config_ron_fuses: 0xa61
GB_pipe_select: 0x227a4

Any help will be greatly apreciated.

 

[mmx]

Hi, All
Im new at this Video Card moding stuff, I have an AX800 Non pro (vivo) ATITool says I have the R430 chip. I want to know if Im able to flash this card to unlock the 16 pipes, and how do I do it.
These are the device specs on ATITool:
PCI Express
Active pipelines: 12
Config_die_fuses : 0xffff7fff
config_substrate_fuses: 0xffffff9e
config_ron_fuses: 0xa61
GB_pipe_select: 0x227a4

Any help will be greatly apreciated.

No more pipes for you...Sorry!!